The yuk factor

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LAURIE Jones knows a thing or two about sewage. The plumber,
drainer and gas fitter has been standing in it, literally, for
years. Researching exactly what goes into our effluent has become
his passion. Jones spends much of his time trawling the internet
and reading books and says he has uncovered evidence proving waste
water is too contaminated to recycle.

Most startling of his claims is that dangerous chemicals in our
sewage will feminise men and shrink their genitals. The evidence
can be found in overseas studies on the effects of synthetic
hormones in polluted water that have shrunk alligator penises in
Florida and affected reproduction in rainbow trout and carp in
Wales and England, he claims.

Jones also believes there is a conspiracy between environment
groups, government and the water industry to hide the truth from
the public about the risks of recycled water.

"I am a licensed plumber and drainer and I know what goes into a
sewer," says Jones, who says treated water should only be used to
flush toilets but for no other domestic purpose, nor for
agriculture, industry, or irrigation of sporting ovals. Not even
for washing the car.

The Sunshine Coast plumber - who has no scientific or water
treatment expertise - represents the extreme end of anti-recycling
sentiment that has toppled more than one government's plans, both
here and overseas, to supplement water sources with treated
effluent.

According to water experts, people should ask questions about
the safety of any treated effluent being injected back into a city
or town's water system. They also say no major health risks have
arisen from the use of recycled water overseas although that should
not lead water authorities or governments to be complacent about
treatment processes.

However, governments ignore the Joneses of the world at their
peril. Their message that recycled water poses long-term health
risks taps into our fears of contaminated water. Modern treatment
systems are designed to remove contaminates, but for some people no
amount of information about the safety of that process can overcome
what academics call the yuk factor.

As the NSW Government's research revealed, the public's
long-held resistance to using recycled water manifests as a
"psychological barrier" thrown up by a feeling of disgust. Some
people can't move beyond the mental image of raw sewage even when
they know sewage is no longer present in the water that is produced
by sophisticated treatment plants. For others there's a general
sense that the water is "dirty" and could lead to illness and
disease, according to work done last year by the Australian Water
Association and the CSIRO.

It doesn't help when politicians, both for and against recycling
water, confuse the debate by suggesting people will be drinking
human waste.

"Surely we have to accept we have to drink our own excrement,"
was how Chris Harris, a Sydney City councillor and a member of the
NSW Greens, phrased it at a recent council meeting convened to
discuss Sydney's water shortage.

Governments only need look at Jones's track record to realise
the yuk factor is alive and well in Australia. Over the past decade
the plumber from Buddina has helped scuttle plans by three
Queensland councils to recycle water. Now he has his sights set on
Toowoomba, where he has rallied residents to oppose the council's
ambitious plans to serve up recycled water to its residents in the
face of a dire water shortage.

It is an emotive issue that cannot be easily resolved by facts
and figures, says the University of NSW's Associate Professor Greg
Leslie, who has worked with Orange County in the US and the
Singapore Government on water treatment plants.

"The water is safe," Leslie told the Herald. "I would
have no problems with my five-year-old drinking the water from the
type of plant Toowoomba is proposing."

Leslie, who, along with other water experts, has been helping
Toowoomba Council with its water treatment proposal, says the
chances of becoming ill from water recycled to drinking level
standards is minuscule.

"You have more chance of being struck by lightning or of winning
the lottery," he says, adding that no government authority enters
into the issue lightly.

"What we are dealing with is a cultural conditioning that has
been traced back to every anthropological group to separate your
waste from your clean food and water.

"We teach our children to wash their hands after they go to the
toilet. It has been programmed into us by our parents and we did it
because it was a way of keeping us healthy," he says.

However, the truth, he says, is that modern treatment processes
remove so much material from effluent that it can no longer be
identified as waste water.

The deputy director for the Centre for Water and Waste
Technology at NSW University, Professor Nick Ashbolt, says it is
reasonable to raise concerns about treated water but points out
some Australians already drink recycled water.

In NSW, for example, tertiary treated effluent from nine Sydney
Water treatment plants is discharged into the Hawkesbury-Nepean
river system, upstream of the North Richmond water filtration
plant. The plant treats up to 50 megalitres of water a day from the
river that is used by people in the Hawkesbury region including
Windsor and Richmond and towards the Blue Mountains as far as
Kurrajong.

"Despite concerns about gender bending [from chemicals in water]
there is no evidence of that being associated with what people are
drinking," says Ashbolt. "It is easy to be alarmist and to raise
these concerns."

A senior research scientist and microbiologist with the CSIRO's
land and water division, Dr Simon Toze, agrees. His own searches of
international literature on water re-use found no evidence people
became sick from using water from properly controlled treatment
plants. Exhaustive epidemiological studies done in four countries
where recycled water is drunk have found no risk of infection from
pathogens.

"You have a better chance of catching an infection from a
day-care centre or a swimming pool than from a properly controlled
and properly run reclaimed water system," he says.

Toze says many of the studies about the lack of social
acceptance of recycled water show the public's decision comes down
to trust.

"I know the technology works but I have to prove to people that
it can work. The worst thing that could happen is if we ask people
to let us prove to them it works, that they won't let us run a
pilot project."

That trust was sorely tested in the late 1990s when a
potentially lethal parasite, Cryptosporidium parvum, invaded
Sydney's dams and water pipes. For weeks, the city's residents were
forced to boil their water although there was no evidence of anyone
getting sick, which aroused suspicion about false test readings.
Disputes between Sydney Water and the state Health Department about
what to tell the public, and secret contracts between the water
authority and the then operators of the Prospect water treatment
plant, raised questions about whether money and power were being
put ahead of public safety.

Which leads us back to Toowoomba.

A local resident and past president of the Toowoomba Chamber of
Commerce, Rosemary Morley, is angry the council has not consulted
locals about its water recycling plans. So convinced was she by
Jones that such a plan would put people at risk, she set up a local
branch of Citizens Against Drinking Sewage and invited him to speak
at a public meeting.

No Toowoomba councillors, council staff or independent water
experts were invited to address the estimated 500 people who turned
up to the Centenary Heights school hall.

Asked why she places so much trust in a man with no technical or
academic expertise in water treatment, or recycling, Morley says
Jones is an "ordinary man" just like Toowoomba residents.

"We are ordinary people and if you can't convince us it will be
safe we are not prepared to make a mistake," says Morley,
who adds she is not concerned enough about the water shortage to go
down the water recycling track. Nor does she trust assurances from
scientists.

"There is a big leap of faith to be made," says Morley. "People
are in the grip of hysteria We have a right to be sceptical
people are not prepared to pay the price."

Busting the recycling myths

. Recycled water is a "toxic cocktail" of chemicals and human
excrement. Not so. Experts say treated water is just that:
water. The newest technology involving multiple barriers and other
processes extracts all that material to the point where not only is
it no longer present in the water, the water is cleaner than much
of the water we get from our dams and rivers, and clean enough to
use in dialysis machines.

. Drinking recycled water will threaten your manhood.
These claims are based on cases, mostly in the US, of massive
contamination of water sources such as lakes with chemicals and
pollutants that disrupt biological processes, and which can copy
the effects of naturally produced hormones such as oestrogen.
Changes in the genitalia and hormone levels of fish and other
wildlife have been found. But CSIRO experts say a man would have to
drink huge amounts of raw sewage to be at risk of being
"feminised". Even in sewage treated to low levels, the risk from
chemical oestrogen is very low.

. Only 1 per cent of Singapore's drinking water is recycled
because the Government lacks confidence in its NEWater treatment
process. Not true. Greg Leslie of the University of NSW says
the figure is low because the water is so clean the Government
makes more money selling it to specialised industry than selling it
to residents.